Table of Contents
UT Health Science Center Connects
Austin to Houston
for
Inter-institutional
Biomedical Engineering Department
In a move to strengthen the state’s biotechnology research capabilities, three institutions of The University of Texas System are combining resources to form a new biomedical engineering program to operate in Houston and Austin.
Educational and research programs of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at UT Austin will join with the UT Health Science Center at Houston and the UT M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
The new, expanded department will foster interinstitutional collaborations by providing seed grants for new joint research incentives, facilitating multiinvestigator research and training-grant proposals, and offering special educational programs and internships, distance-learning classes, and teleconferences.
“What we bring to the table is highly skilled faculty and students in the areas of medical imaging and instrumentation, biomaterials that are being developed on the molecular, cellular and tissue scales, and computational modeling and analysis capabilities that can be applied to medical issues,” said Kenneth R. Diller, Sc.D., UT Austin’s current chair of biomedical engineering and the Robert M. and Prudie Leibrock Endowed Professor in Engineering. “This new department enables us to excel in both fundamental research and its translation to clinical applications.”
UT Austin biomedical engineering faculty will continue to direct undergraduate degrees in the field. All three institutions will continue offering graduate-level degree programs, which will be broadened to enable cross-institutional student participation. Students may reside in Austin or Houston, and can pursue their studies at whichever institution best meets their tailored educational goals.
The UT Health Science Center elements of the new department will be housed in the new University of Texas Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging Research, planned for construction at the UT Research Park/South Campus.
Important for Physician Scientists
“The UT Health Science Center at Houston will provide the medical school component in this department, which will have importance for our physician scientist (M.D./Ph.D.) trainees in biomedical engineering,” said Executive Vice President for Research Peter J. A. Davies, M.D., Ph.D. “We will see a growing strength in biomedical engineering aspects of the neurosciences, imaging and cardiovascular medicine – as well as in the unique features of our School of Health Information Sciences and its role in applying computer sciences and informatics to issues of health research.”
Biomedical nanotechnology pioneer Mauro Ferrari, Ph.D., will serve as an interim deputy chair of the new department and provide additional expertise from the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases. Ferrari recently joined the UT Health Science Center as a professor of nanotechnology, and he also will be president of the Alliance for NanoHealth, a collaborative venture of seven Houston-area research institutions.
Interim Leadership
Much of the interim leadership structure for the new department should be in place by Sept. 1, when The University of Texas Department of Biomedical Engineering officially opens. The department will be an academic unit in the College of Engineering at UT Austin, with equivalent units in Houston at both the UT Health Science Center and M. D. Anderson.
A department chair will be selected after a national search, with deputy chairs at each participating campus. The chair will report to an oversight committee made up of: College of Engineering Dean Ben Streetman, Ph.D.; L. Maximilian Buja, M.D., UT Health Science Center’s executive vice president for academic affairs; and Margaret L. Kripke, Ph.D., executive vice president and chief academic officer at M. D. Anderson.
By September, about 30 faculty members will hold primary appointments in the new department, while still residing at their home institution. By early 2008, most department faculty in Austin will move into the new 140,000-square-foot Biomedical Engineering building under construction at the corner of University Avenue and Dean Keaton Street.
The University of Texas Center for Biomedical Engineering will become part of the new department, and it will be renamed the Engineering Center for Medical Applications (ECMA).
M. D. Anderson’s Michele Follen, M.D., Ph.D., will serve as director of the ECMA, which will have expanded programs for translating laboratory discoveries into clinical applications, for interfacing with institutions outside the UT System, and for building cooperative arrangements with industrial partners.
The current UT Austin Department of Biomedical Engineering is part of an engineering college that nationally ranks among the top seven public engineering schools and has the fourth-highest number of faculty elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
Translate into Patient Care
“With the tremendous progress made in understanding cancer and other complex health conditions, it is vital that we have tools, materials and devices to complement new therapies, surgical techniques, imaging technologies and basic science advancements,” said Charles W. Patrick Ph.D., interim deputy chair for M. D. Anderson. “We are entering an age of medicine that will take detection, treatment and prevention to the molecular and patient-specific levels, and we must have the talent pool and expertise to develop and perfect the technologies needed to leverage this knowledge and care for patients.”
U.S. News & World Report has ranked M. D. Anderson Cancer Center among the top two cancer hospitals for more than a decade. It annually treats more than 70,000 patients, who have access to the largest cancer clinical trials program in the United States.
“Combining the strength of the UT System’s largest research university with two major institutions of the largest medical center in the world provides a tremendous opportunity to translate basic research into medical advances that benefit the citizens of Texas and beyond,” said Sheldon Ekland-Olson, UT Austin executive vice president and provost.